City: Charleston, SC

Category: Tours & Attractions

Address: 136 Church St.

Insider Pick:

Description: French Huguenots were followers of the 16th-century French reformer John Calvin. After Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes (1685), there was an enormous flight away from France by Protestants, many of whom came to the Carolinas. The Huguenot Church in Charleston was organized in 1681, and groups of believers arrived in this area between 1680 and 1763. In 1706 the Church Act established the Anglican Church as the official religion in South Carolina, and slowly, most Huguenot churches were absorbed into what became Episcopal congregations. The Huguenot Church in Charleston is the outstanding exception; it is the only remaining independent Huguenot congregation in America. This church was the city’s first to be built (1845) in the Gothic Revival style. It was designed by Edward Brickell White, a noted Charleston architect who is credited with popularizing the Gothic style in America. The church was damaged by shelling during the Civil War and nearly demolished by the 1886 earthquake. Each time, it was painstakingly restored. The building underwent a major refurbishing in 1997. The church’s famous Tracker organ, restored in 1967 by the Preservation Society of Charleston and the Charleston chapter of the American Organists Guild, is one of the city’s true musical treasures. It is one of the last of its kind anywhere in the country.